Zaps don't continuously check for triggers. No mobile apps. No support for Smart Home devices. Managing folders could be simpler.

Bottom Line

Zapier is an excellent online service that lets you create automated actions between disparate business and productivity apps, all without any coding knowledge.

If you use a wide range of business and productivity apps, you need a way to connect them all. Zapier is an online tool that helps non-technical people create interlinked functions across these services. You can chain commands together with an "If X happens, do Y" structure where X and Y can be practically any app. For example, every time you publish a post on WordPress you could use Zapier to automatically post to Slack about it. The real selling point of these automations (which Zapier calls Zaps) is that you don't need to write any code, even when you're chaining multiple actions together. Zapier's only real competitor in the space is IFTTT, which offers more in the way of home automation support, as well as mobile apps. Still, Zapier retains its Editors' Choice distinction alongside IFTTT; both are excellent options for business and productivity workflows.

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Pricing and Plans

Zapier offers a free level of service, albeit with some limitations. With this account, you can perform up to 100 tasks per month, but you can only have five Zaps active at any given time. These Zaps run every 15 minutes. The free tier does not support Premium Apps or Autoreplay (more on this below). You also cannot create multistep Zaps. Businesses may find Zapier's free account limited, but it's beefy enough to give them a taste of how it works. This free version includes a 14-day trial of premium features.

Premium Apps are nothing more than apps that Zapier has decided to keep behind its paywall. They include Amazon S3, Evernote Business, GoToWebinar, MySQL, PayPal, QuickBase, QuickBooks, Salesforce, SQL Server, Zendesk, and many others.

Autoreplay is a failsafe measure that's automatically triggered if a task is supposed to run, but doesn't. Failures happen from time to time for a variety of reasons, such as when a third-party API is temporarily unavailable. Autoreplay means Zapier automatically retries the task in case of this kind of failure. Interestingly, Zapier staggers each rerun of the Zap over a 10-hour period, increasing the time interval between each attempt. For free accounts, Zapier sends you an email notification when a Zap fails and you need to rerun it manually.

The Starter account, which costs $20 per month, includes Premium Apps, but not Autoreplay Tasks. You get 1,000 tasks per month, however, and 20 Zaps, which run every 15 minutes. Professional accounts run $50 per month and include Premium Apps, Autoreplay Tasks, and support for 3,000 tasks per month across 50 Zaps. Zaps run every 5 minutes for this tier of service.

Zapier also offers a Professional Plus account, for $125 per month. Professional Plus includes everything in the Professional account, plus support for 10,000 tasks per month across 125 Zaps. Zaps still run every 5 minutes. The top-of-the-line account plan, Teams, allows 50,000 tasks to run per month across an unlimited number of Zaps. If you go over this limit, Zapier charges you based on your usage. In addition to all the features of the Professional accounts, this plan lets you share Zaps and Connections across your team. You can also group all account charges into a single invoice.

For comparison, IFTTT is free as of this writing. Although IFTTT is expected to introduce paid subscription levels at some point in the future, neither pricing or details are available at this time.

Zapier vs. IFTTT

Zapier focuses mostly on business and productivity apps, though there is significant overlap between these two categories. On the productivity side, Zapier supports Asana, Google Calendar, Evernote, Todoist, and so forth. More business-focused apps include GitHub, QuickBooks Online, Slack, Toggle, and Wrike. Zapier also includes some built-in functionality for translating text, executing code, filtering data, or even delaying actions.

IFTTT also supports all the common productivity apps, but has been gradually embracing the Internet of things (IoT) movement as an area of specialization. Smart light bulbs, appliances, and doorbells all fall under this umbrella. IFTTT also works with Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Siri, which Zapier does not.

Zapier supports multi-app Zaps, meaning you can create a chain of events across more than two services. For example, you can instruct Zapier to send a message to the team channel in Slack after someone completes a task in Asana, and then add the project name to a public Google Sheets spreadsheet of completed projects. With IFTTT, you can only create an automation between two services.

Another key differentiator is that IFTTT offers apps for both Android and iOS. Zapier does not offer mobile apps on any platform. So, if you intend to create and automate tasks from your phone, IFTTT is the best choice. That's not to say that Zapier does not offer some mobile functionality; you can use Zapier's built-in capabilities to send texts directly to your phone. For example, I created a Zap to send me the daily weather forecast via SMS. I tested this Zap using my Nexus 5X running Android 8.0 and it worked as advertised.

Getting Started

To sign up for Zapier, all you need to do is provide your work email address, name, and password. Alternatively, you can just use an existing Google account. You can also set up two-factor authentication with your account.

Zapier's web interface features a clean design with distinct layout elements, colorful icons for apps and services, and helpful link-hovering effects. The main dashboard area breaks down into four sections: Explore, Zaps, Task History, and Connected Accounts. You can search for apps and pre-built Zaps in the Explore section. If you select at least two apps in the top section, Zapier generates some Zap examples that you may find useful, which can help you grasp its full potential.

The Zaps section is where you can find all of the Zaps that you created, even if they are not active. I like that you can organize your Zaps into folders but am disappointed that the interface does not support drag-and-drop functionality (here or during the Zap creation process). You can browse the apps supported by Zapier, including those that will be supported soon. If you're a business owner who is waiting for Zapier to support a specific app that makes your business run, such as Atlassian Stride, Etsy, or Drupal, it's important to know that Zapier hasn't willfully chosen not to support them; it's just that they haven't developed all the hooks Zapier needs to connect with them yet.

The Task History tab is where you can view a complete log of your Zap activity. The interface includes useful filters for sorting by name, status, and date. Clicking on an individual Zap instance brings you to a separate page with details on the input and output data. If you subscribe to a high-enough account tier, you can also enable the Autoreplay feature from this screen. The last section, Connected Accounts, lets you view every account that you have authorized Zapier to access. Zapier makes it easy to test, disconnect, or reconnect each linked account. I appreciate that Zapier makes these options readily accessible.

Setting Up Your Zaps

Zapier makes it easy to create simple Zaps of your own. The interface for creating Zaps is as clean as the rest of the dashboard and sports a sparse, whitespace-heavy look. The right-hand menu outlines your progress in plain language and you configure the settings in the middle panel. IFTTT has a brighter, friendlier look and feel, however. With IFTTT, you click on large If+ and That+ links in the header, and select from a variety of cards to build your productivity task flow.

You can think about a Zap as consisting of two main elements: the trigger and the action. The first step, of course, is to choose a Trigger app and associated action. Let's say, for example, you want to record some bit of information from every incoming email to a spreadsheet. So, to start, you select Gmail as the trigger app, and choose the New Email action. The next step is to sign into your Gmail account, or whatever app or service you want to connect. Zapier then shows some additional options related to the action, in this case, a drop-down for specifying which label or inbox to use.

The next part of the process is to choose an Action App and related action. This is when you select Google Sheets and choose whether to add the email data to a new row or column. The initial parts of the Actions setup follow the same process as above until you get to the Edit Template section. This is where you tell Zapier exactly what you want it to do with the data from the Trigger app. Options vary based on the Trigger app you chose. Continuing with the current example, you need to specify the Spreadsheet and Worksheet you want to use. Then, you select what data you want to take from the email, such as the body text, subject, or date. Keep in mind that you can make simple formatting changes to the output by typing characters between the output blocks in the Template section or by adding Zapier's built-in Formatter step between the Trigger and Action steps.

That's just one example of a Zap. You can combine any number of services to work together in ways that benefit you. For example, you can link together Slack and Trello to help communicate goals and assign tasks more efficiently. Maybe you want to share new time entries from Toggl to Asana. Zapier can even help Amazon S3 customers automatically move important files from Google Drive or Dropbox into Amazon's cloud storage. However complex your needs, Zapier likely offers some combination of functions that will improve your workflow.

You can add as many steps to a Zap as you want by simply hitting the plus button below the last action you created. You can also create a name for your Zap and add a note so you don't forget what it does or how it works. This last part is useful for anyone who intends to share Zaps with other members of a team.

If you choose to add more advanced options to your Zap and you're not a technically adept person, then you might have to do some A/B testing to confirm that the changes you make have the desired effect. I didn't have too much trouble figuring out what the options would do, but less tech-savvy users may have some questions that are best answered through experimentation.

For ideas on what Zaps to create, check out our collection of the best IFTTT recipes for everyone from bloggers, photographers, shoppers, and more. Many of these same recipes can be replicated on Zapier and expanded with additional steps. Take a look through the list to spark some ideas.

Zapier for Automation

Zapier is a wonderful tool for automating business and productivity tasks. It supports pretty much every app you might use and gives lots of helpful suggestions on how to combine services in useful ways. It also supports multistep chains, which its competitor IFTTT does not. On the other hand, the completely free IFTTT offers mobile applications and support for smart-home devices. However, one is not necessarily better than the other, and they also support most of the same apps and services. There's nothing stopping you from using both.

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About the Author

Ben Moore is a Junior Analyst for PCMag's software team. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Neowin.net, and Tom's Guide on everything from hardware to business acquisitions across the tech industry. Ben holds a degree in New Media and Digital Design from Fordham University at Lincoln Center, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of The Obse... See Full Bio

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